


two wanderers on separate paths (once bound by a thread now cut through)

by leyxo



Category: Sam and Colby, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Light Angst, M/M, Post-The Origin, References to Welsh Mythology, Spirits, Unconventional Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 19:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20569361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leyxo/pseuds/leyxo
Summary: Set after "The Origin" series.After cleansing themselves of the spirits haunting them, Colby's ready to move on, but Sam isn't. (He'll be damned if he admits to missing a certain ghost, who's most definitelynothis friend.)





	two wanderers on separate paths (once bound by a thread now cut through)

**Author's Note:**

> yes, i've emerged from the depths of writer's block with this random piece that nobody asked for. still, i'd like to know your thoughts (and requests if you have any). this is technically part of a bigger AU (later in the series) in which Sam and Colby are dating and living together after moving out of the trap house. in this, the Midnight Man is Llŷr, originally the god of the sea in Welsh mythology (i decided to create my own backstory to him (cause why not) and this is what i ended up with). anyway, i might write more in the future if inspiration strikes.

Perched on the ridge of the roof of the warehouse, looking over the trees basking in the cool hue of pink and blue morning light, Sam thinks about the sea. Waves sigh against the shore with the rustling of leaves and background conversation, a faint smell of salt carried by the gentle wind playing with his hair. Splaying his hands over the cold, uneven surface of the rock under him, Sam lets his eyes flutter closed and—

A hand claps sharply onto his back. The bottom of his stomach drops out, and he grabs onto the ridge with enough force to send pain shooting up his wrists. Sam stares, wide-eyed, down the slant of the roof, his whole body pulsing with shock. He takes a deep, quivering breath and turns his head to look at Colby, whose face has gone unusually pale.

“Thanks,” Sam breathes, receives a minute nod in return.

“Dude, you okay?” Nate calls out from where he's sitting by the chimney.

“Yeah.” Sam clears his throat. “Just tired.”

Colby withdraws his hand, but his gaze remains fixed on Sam. “It's been a long night,” he agrees, his voice simultaneously light and wound tight with tension.

After a moment of silence, Nate sighs. He glances into the distance in a somewhat wistful manner. “We should probably get going.”

Sam hums in agreement; the longer they stay here in daylight, the more chance there is of getting caught. With practiced ease, Colby stands up on the roof. He offers the other his hand. Although tempted to ignore it—just because he dozed and nearly fell off the roof doesn't mean he can't handle himself, alright?—Sam accepts it with a quiet thanks.

They fly back to L.A. on the same day, arriving in the sweltering heat of late afternoon. Sam pulls the apartment door shut, turns around to find Colby already sprawled over the couch. With a half-hearted scoff, Sam proceeds to move about the apartment, methodically unpacking his suitcase and opening the windows to let in some fresh air.

As he heads to the kitchen, Colby props himself up on an elbow. He peers at Sam from under his hair, still mussed from the nap he took in the car. “What're you doing?”

“Unpacking?”

“_Now_?”

Sam can't help but to laugh at the sheer incredulousness in Colby's voice. “Looks like it.” His smile falls upon finding the fridge mostly empty; unless bottles of likely expired sauce can be counted as food. “Shit, we forgot to get groceries.”

“We can go to Target later. Or just Postmate something.” Just as Sam opens his mouth to protest (“We can't keep Postmating food forever, bro, it's not healthy.”), Colby yawns and makes grabby hands at him. “C'mere.”

Sam shakes his head, even as he walks up to the couch. “It's too hot.” When Colby simply takes hold of his hand and tugs him on top of him, Sam rolls his eyes, fighting a smile. “You're gonna push me off in, like, ten seconds.”

Colby squeezes him flush against his chest. “Nonsense.”

Sam groans, already feeling stifled by the heat. “_Jesus_, you're hot.”

Colby waggles his brows, but loosens his hold a little. “I know.”

“Hot as in _body te__m__perature_,” Sam clarifies, unimpressed. “Don't get any ideas.”

Colby purses his lips, as though considering it. “Nah,” he decides then, “I just wanna cuddle. And nap.” As if to prove his point, he lets out a yawn.

“Want me to sing you a lullaby?” Sam teases, shifting so that he's lying half on top of the other, half next to him.

Colby snorts. “Fuck off.”

They settle into a comfortable silence. Subconsciously, their breathing falls into sync, soft among the sounds of outside traffic and the clock ticking on the wall. Suddenly becoming aware of the too-familiar sensation of being watched, Sam cranes his neck back to look toward the shelf under the TV. The silvery cat statue he bought off Amazon is eyeing him attentively, with its head resting on its paws. Only then, Sam realizes that the air in the apartment, however hot and dry at the moment, doesn't feel as heavy anymore.

“Something's different,” he muses.

“Hm?”

“Something's different,” Sam repeats. “About the apartment, I mean.”

Colby inhales deeply, likely pulled right from the edge of sleep. “A good or a bad different?”

Sam resumes eye contact with the statue. “Good.” The cat holds his stare with a cool indifference. “I think.”

“I guess that means the ritual worked.” Pause. “You don't think so?”

With some difficulty, Sam tears his gaze from the statue to look at Colby. His brow is furrowed in a curious frown, the blue of his heavy-lidded eyes hazy with tiredness.

“Give it a few weeks,” Sam says simply. He shuffles closer to the other, suddenly overcome with the need to sleep. To forget.

If he didn't know any better, he'd think Llŷr's gone, for good this time. But the spirit has proven not to be a fan of letting people, Sam in particular, lead their normal, day-to-day lives. He will be back soon enough.

Sam drifts off to the sound of waves crashing on rocks.

The thing is, Sam's never had to actively look for Llŷr ever since he first summoned him two years ago. Tethered together by a thread created through ritual magic, the spirit has little choice but to follow him wherever he goes. (“Think of him as a house pet,” Sam suggests after admitting to Colby that moving house wouldn't solve their ghost problem. He's met by two deadpan stares; Colby's and Llŷr's, who's standing right behind him.) Despite the rocky start of their companionship, Sam would be lying if he said Llŷr's presence didn't make him feel more at ease, especially with other entities—or leeches, like Llŷr refers to them—lingering in close vicinity. In the following days, eventually weeks, it becomes apparent, however, that the ritual did actually work, leaving the apartment quiet, even peaceful, in the departed spirits' wake. And instead of relieved, Sam feels unsettled.

Naturally, Colby catches onto it pretty quickly.

They're eating dinner—a home-cooked meal for once—when he abruptly puts his fork down and fixes Sam with a serious gaze. “Okay, what's wrong?” At the other's puzzled silence, he continues, “Ever since we got back from Kansas, you've been acting strange. You barely sleep. You get so deep in thought it feels like you're not even _ here _. And you keep looking at that fucking cat—” he jerks his head toward the living room, where Sam knows the statue is listening in on their conversation with feigned interest, “—like you're expecting it to talk back or something.” Colby narrows his eyes. “You aren't possessed again, are you?”

“No, of course not.” Realizing where this is going, Sam instinctively folds his arms across his chest. “And even if I was, you know I wouldn't be able to—”

“So, what is it then?” Colby cuts him off, undeterred.

“Nothing.” Even to himself, Sam sounds petulant.

Colby's quiet for a moment, studying the other with a scrutiny that makes him squirm on the inside. “You feel guilty.”

“And why the hell would I feel guilty?”

“Because of Llŷr,” Colby says, matter-of-fact, then sighs. “He's not your friend, Sam.”

Sam figures he's more irritated by Colby initiating this conversation, about an issue that's strictly _ Sa__m__'s_, not his—never has been his, considering his stance on Llŷr and the paranormal in general—than anything because he snaps, “How would you know?” before he can stop himself.

Colby's now glaring at him, looking more unimpressed by the second. “He's, like, a thousand years old—”

“Trust me, it's _a lot_ more than that.”

“—and he's tried to—” Colby falters. His gaze flits to the side, as though he can't believe what he's about to say. “For fuck's sake, Sam, he's tried to _kill_ you before, remember? More than once.”

Sam opens his mouth and closes it again. “We've come a long way,” he says lamely.

Colby stares at him. “Shit,” he breathes, hanging his head briefly. “What I'm trying to say—” his hand reaches over the table to take Sam's, “—is that you don't have to feel guilty for sending Llŷr away. It's good for us, alright? If we wanna keep doing this, we gotta think about our safety, our _friends'_ safety, first.”

Something in Sam's chest deflates. He drops his gaze to the tabletop, to their joined hands. “Yeah, I know.”

And he _ does _ know. He just feels... differently.

Later that night, Sam plucks the cat statue off the shelf. For a moment, he considers simply chucking it off the balcony. Maybe seeing it shatter into pieces on the pavement would serve as closure.

He ends up storing it in his prop box instead.

Opening his eyes to a bedroom still dark in the early hours of the morning, Sam isn't sure what woke him. Colby's sound asleep behind him, one arm strewn over his waist. With a stifled sigh of resignation, Sam climbs out of bed, careful not to disturb the other. In nights like these, sleep is as easy to slip away as sand through spread fingers.

Sam heads out into the joined kitchen and living room. He picks an abandoned sweatshirt—one of Colby's, judging by the size and color—off the couch, pulls it on to hide from the chill in the apartment. (It was a mutual, unspoken agreement to keep the AC on twenty-four seven; both of them are, to this day, traumatized by the consistently broken one back in the trap house. Naturally, Llŷr, greatly amused by this piece of information, would proceed to occasionally turn it off and on again just for the sake of annoying the shit out of them.)

Leaned against the kitchen counter, an half-finished glass of water in hand, Sam contemplates the door to the balcony. Uncovered by the blinds, it appears as a mere veil between him and the dark abyss of the night. His reflection is a dimmed silhouette surrounded by floating bulbs of gaunt, yellow light, somewhat lonely in the stillness left behind by the spirits that no longer haunt this place.

Sam's feet lead him out to the balcony on their own accord. He's greeted by a brisk breeze, coaxed further by its gentle tousle of his hair. Something in him relaxes under the thick blanket of quiet that lies over the neighborhood, the orange haze of street lights seeping an almost tangible warmth. He leans on the railing, just to see a small, four-legged figure bound across the road. A glint of silver catches Sam's eye, and, for a moment, the smell of salt and seaweed sparks the air—

He's startled by a pair of arms wrapping around him from behind.

“Sorry,” Colby mumbles, his voice rough but warm by Sam's ear. He presses a soft kiss to the side of the other's neck. “What're you doing up?”

Sam relaxes back against his chest. He takes hold of Colby's hand, traces the bare fingers with his thumb. “Couldn't sleep.”

Colby stiffens a fraction. “Are you hearing them again? The voices?”

“No,” Sam replies honestly.

“What about—” Colby sighs, presumably unwilling to speak the name he's intent on forgetting. “What about him? Is he back?”

“The Midnight Man?” Sam hasn't used this particular name, or rather nickname, in a while, having many other alternatives to choose from (“Call me the Dark Knight one more time, and I _will_ slam the cupboard door on your fingers, Samuel.”), but it's familiar, tinged with nostalgia. Some of his mirth fades, however, as he's reminded of Llŷr's continued absence. “I'm not sure.”

If Colby finds the answer unreassuring, he doesn't say so. After a beat of silence, he asks, “You wanna stay out here?”

Down below, the street lights glow a fiery red-yellow, like the belly of a furnace, but without their earlier warmth. The air, albeit still soft on his face, has gone brittle with the smoke of dust and asphalt.

“No.” Sam turns around in the other's embrace, leans up to kiss him. “Let's go back to bed.”

Colby pulls back just enough to peer down at him. A soft smile plays on his lips. “Okay.”

Later, Sam is just as sleepless as before, absent-mindedly drawing patterns on Colby's chest as it rises and falls in a steady rhythm. A burning, watery tiredness prickles behind his eyes, urging his mind to get its much-needed rest. Tomorrow, they're filming the update to their endeavours in Kansas, including the talk with Jake and Corey about going bigger. About going international.

Behind him, the first beams of morning sun filter in through the blinds, striping the opposite wall with translucent gray light. With his vision tipped sideways, Sam feels as though he's looking at the door of a prison cell.

_You, like other__s__ with the sa__m__e obsession,_ an all-too-familiar voice echoes from an unplaced memory, _keep digging under the door instead of just opening it. Through bloody concrete._

The next time Sam opens his eyes, he finds himself on a beach. Marveling at the dusty white sand under his feet and the crystal blue waves, capped with pearly foam, roaring between the jagged rocks half a mile away, he doesn't notice Llŷr immediately. The spirit is stretched out like a cat on a boulder just out of the water, basking in the glow of the afternoon sun. His current face is angular and youthful, the one Sam's grown accustomed to, framed by locks of long, silver hair, tumbling freely over his shoulders and back. But instead of modern clothes, he's wearing light-colored robes that keep fluttering in the wind.

As Sam walks up to the boulder, Llŷr turns his head. “Oh, it's you,” he says, with exaggerated surprise.

To indulge him, Sam retorts, “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No,” Llŷr replies cheerfully. His gaze slips back toward the horizon. “I suppose not.”

After a beat of silence, Sam asks tentatively, “Were you there when it happened?”

“Partly.” Llŷr tips his head back, closing his eyes briefly. Sunlight dances across the silver-blue scales on the right side of his neck. “It'll please you to know that the ritual, no matter how poorly conducted, succeeded in cleansing Colby, Nate and yourself from the leeches latched onto you.”

“'Poorly conducted'?”

“It's wise to cast a circle,” Llŷr explains, somehow sounding both patient and extremely bored, “before asking any elements or deities to assist you in magick.”

“Well, I had no one to ask,” Sam counters.

“Besides the Internet.”

Sam stares at the spirit for a moment, then nods to himself. “Fair enough. Where've you been, anyway?”

“I'm a working man,” Llŷr deadpans. “I had some business to attend to.”

“Summoned by teenagers again?”

Llŷr grimaces. “Indeed.”

Sam's mouth twists at the pure disdain in his voice. He sombers, however, as the question that's been gnawing at him these past weeks returns to the forefront of his mind. “Did the ritual work on you, though?”

“There's little that can touch a god,” Llŷr says, as though it's obvious (and still true despite the contrary).

“Bodily or emotionally?”

Without batting an eye, Llŷr drawls, “Are you suggesting I lack empathy, Samuel?”

“I get the impression every now and then, yeah,” Sam replies lightly.

Llŷr shakes his head, muttering something in Old Welsh under his breath. Then, his expression goes pensive. “But to answer your question... Yes, it's true that the thread's been cut.”

Sam swallows. “Does that mean we're gonna go our separate ways now?” he asks, attempting to sound nonchalant.

Llŷr glances down at him. “You're not going to miss me now, are you?”

“No,” Sam says immediately. Huffs. “Why would I?”

“Not even our heartfelt late night conversations?” Llŷr teases, feigning hurt.

“If you call scaring the absolute shit out of me at two a.m. a 'conversation', then...” Sam trails off, as though thinking it over, “uh, no.”

Llŷr chuckles, but becomes serious once more. “As I've said before, you and I, Samuel—we're wanderers. We don't know where our feet may lead us to.” His amber eyes sparkle. “But who's to say there won't be another crossroad?”

Sam looks away, suddenly overwhelmed. “I thought you didn't have anywhere else to go except 'the darkness and the sea'.” The theatricality of the last part falls flat, even to his own ears.

“I don't,” Llŷr agrees nevertheless. “Makes finding me less difficult then, eh?”

Sam's gaze flits back to him. “Why should I want to find you again?”

“You shouldn't.” The corner of Llŷr's mouth curves up in a crooked grin. “But you might.”

Sam suppresses a groan. “You're doing it again.”

“Doing what?” Llŷr asks, quirking an innocent brow.

“Being cryptic and mysterious.”

“Why,” Llŷr says, placing a hand on his chest in mock indignation, “I am _always_ cryptic and mysterious, Samuel. It's part of being a deity.”

“You'd be great with an Ouija board,” Sam remarks drily.

Llŷr hums in agreement. “I do like setting them on fire.”

“Isn't water, like, more your forte?” Sam asks, too used to the spirit's antics to be caught off guard by them anymore.

“Perhaps.” Llŷr's smile widens to one of the Cheshire Cat's. “But flooding one's living space isn't exactly courteous now, is it?”

“No,” Sam agrees, struggling to stay impassive at the recollection of the past incident in the trap house, “it's not.”

Llŷr huffs out a laugh. “On that pleasant note, I'll best be off now.” He hops off the rock, landing with almost no sound. “Until the next crossroad, Samuel,” is all he says, characteristically gleeful, before he turns and begins walking the other way without looking back.

And instead of goodbye—like he's _ supposed to_, Colby's voice insists at the back of his head—Sam calls after him, “Sure.”

Strangely enough, the dream doesn't end there. For quite some time, Sam remains standing on the beach, watching Llŷr tread onward along the seaside until he's out of sight. The waves roll and crash in the background, in symphony with the sighing breeze and the squawking seagulls. It's a place of still, timeless peace.

Eventually, Sam turns around and starts his journey home.


End file.
